The
latest work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Buffalo
ruthlessly examines guilt, betrayal, and racial posturing. Two lawyers
are called to defend a wealthy, white client charged with the rape of a
black woman, but soon find themselves embroiled in a case where
prejudice is as disturbing as the evidence.

Reviews and Photos of RACE:

Review by Elizabeth
BruceFebruary
14, 2013

Theatre J’s whip-smart production of Mamet’s ‘Race’
is the go-to production for the unflenchable among us.

In Theatre J’s production of David Mamet’s blistering play, Race,
the known and the unknown ricochet around the stage faster than a
speeding arbitrage. The firm of attorneys Jack Lawson (who is white)
and Henry Brown (who is black) has just been approached by a
prospective client, the wealthy, white Charles Strickland (played by
Leo Erickson), fresh from his rejection by previously sought counsel.
Accused of raping a young black woman, Strickland bears eerie, if not
absolute, resemblance to French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn and
his notorious sexual assault charge of similar ilk, although Mamet’s
play was written before that scandal broke.

Jack (played by James Whalen) and Henry
(played by Michael Anthony Williams) are reluctant to take Charles on
as a client since the evidence, plus the race, class, and gender
volatility of the situation all point to his guilt—or, more
importantly, to his case being unwinnable. The firm, after all, is
ultimately most concerned with their bottom line, and winning cases is
their path to prosperity. “I tried being poor,” Jack says. “I didn’t
like it.”

Into this male triad enters Susan (played by Crashonda
Edwards), a promising young African-American lawyer recently hired by
the two-attorney firm. To her, we presume, will fall the task of
illuminating the gender and race complexities embedded in this
entangled web. The law, however, is much more complicated than that.
“There are no facts about the case,” says one of partners, echoing
Nietzsche. “There are two opposing fictions.”

Mamet does not burden us with case law—Race is not a
crackling, four-letter-word version of Law and Order. What he
gives us are the visceral, unspeakable undercurrents of the personal
and the political that so divide us as a people. Under Director John Vreeke’s incisive direction, Mamet’s
scorching intelligence litters the stage with insights, confessions,
and truths. Guilt and shame. Shame and guilt. Black and white. Woman
and Man. All swept up in an incendiary dance.

With mesmerizing nimbleness Jack and Henry crisscross the
stage. Lean and tall, their gray gabardine suits swaying like silk,
they are boxers, punching the air with legal arguments. Here a right
hook of language, there a cross of logic, an uppercut of evidence
lacking, they churn the law into a sweet science of strategy against
their odds-on favorite foe: a guilty verdict for their client. Whalen
gives Jack a swaggering, cynical certainty that decimates those in his
way. “People are stupid,” he tells Susan. “I don’t think blacks are
exempt.” Williams’ Henry is a velvety-smooth, acidly-funny crash course
in candor. “Do all black people hate whites?” he poses to Charles. “Let
me put your mind at rest. You bet we do.”

Costumed by Erin Nugent, Whalen and Williams look every ounce
the prosperous attorneys at law, pristinely groomed from the shine of
their shoes, the argyle of their socks, to the shimmer of their
designer ties and the salt and pepper of their hair—be it wavy or
sparse. Indeed, only the extraordinary physical precision of Whalen and
Williams belies their profession as actors. Our disbelief is utterly
suspended, and we the spectators—veterans that we are of countless
legal dramas—watch this bruising, sometimes wickedly funny match of
legal wit with twisted interest. Is the client guilty? Is he not?

While Jack and Henry work the stage,
Erickson’s Charles, stands firm, rooting himself upstage or down,
immutable, it seems, trapped in the labyrinth of his own presumptions:
he is innocent. Erickson gives Charles the almost off-hand, arrogant
demeanor of a man whom “no one has said no to in 40 years.”

So too does Edwards’ Susan hold herself still onstage,
watching, arms crossed, her countenance the essence of skepticism:
Charles is guilty. Edwards plays Susan with resolute clarity. The law
is about justice, she asserts, while her bosses and the
audience—sprinkled as it is with attorneys—scoff. But it is Susan who
delivers the counterpunch of the evening, one certain to enliven
post-show discussions for weeks.

The production values at Theatre J, as usual, were crisp and
high. The minimalist, lawyerly sets by Misha Kachman; the uptown,
late-in-the-day lighting design by Andrew Griffin; the sound design by
Chris Baine; and the properties design by Becca Dieffenbach established
well the impeccable interior of a successful small law firm. Shadowy
projections at the top of the show by projections designer Jared
Mezzochi bespoke the Jungian anima/animus to come, and the costume
design by Nugent cinched the roles of each of the characters.

In a metropolitan area where one out of every eighteen
residents is a lawyer, and the fissures of race, class, and gender are
a subtext like no other, Theatre J’s whip-smart production of David
Mamet’s Race is the go-to production for the unflenchable
among us.

Review
by Elizabeth Bruce

Review by Lisa Traiger Arts Correspondent February 13, 2013

Race, racial stereotyping and prejudice
take a back seat to the question
of veracity. Somebody - or everybody - must be lying

There are no shades of gray in David Mamet's provocative legal drama
Race, which deals with guilt and innocence, truth and fabrication, in
black and white. For Mamet, race is everything in a case concerning a
wealthy white man accused of rape by a black hotel housekeeper. That
Mamet's 2009 drama predates the sordid, real-life headline grabber,
when the former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique
Strauss-Kahn was accused of the same crime and then slipped out of the
country, is nearly beside the point. In Theater J's deftly realized
production, on stage at the Washington, DC Jewish Community Center's
Goldman Theater through March 17, race is the lens through which every
moment, every action, every statement is viewed. It's a daring
construct, and in a rousing 90 minutes of snappish dialogue and biting
barbs takes the audience on a wild ride.

To write compellingly about race in
this so-called post-racial era - when a black man occupies the White
House, on the one hand, but, on the other, one in 15 African American
men are incarcerated, compared with one in 106 white men according to
the nonpartisan Center for American Progress - is a challenge of the
highest order. That one-time liberal Mamet has taken up the mantel of
truth teller on the nearly off-limits topic of racial politics is, in
itself, intriguing. The former darling of the left-wing theater and
Hollywood crowds, anointed for his earlier works, which seemed to take
down the establishment or the status quo, Mamet has taken an about-face
in recent years, realigning himself on the right. These days whether
he's talking about Israel or education or taxes, he's solidly ensconced
in the conservative camp.

In Race, two law partners sling barbs back and forth before their
would-be defendant Charles Strickland, none too worried about his guilt
or innocence, but highly concerned about the benefit and pitfalls of
taking his case. Mamet unleashes his usual R-rated epithets and
insults, made more powerful by the force of his preference for staccato
dialogue and over-talking that transform the conversations into tightly
wound realism, fed by the dynamism and tension-filled patter of the
characters.

Director John Vreeke sets up the sparring nicely on designer
Misha Kachman's chrome-leather-and-wood law office, overlaid at the
start with Jared Mezzocchi's collage of historic photographic
projections.

Sometimes lawyers Jack and Henry face off, other times they circle each
other in a boxing ring. That they're on the same side in the long run
makes the verbal dueling more intriguing as they pepper both their
prospective client and their neophyte assistant with questions and
demands. The kicker for Mamet is that one lawyer, Jack (James Whalen)
is white, the other, Henry (Michael Anthony Williams), is black, as is
new-hire Susan (Crashonda Edwards).
In Mamet's setup, race matters, really above guilt or innocence. When
Brown confronts Charles early on he's perfectly blunt: "There's nothing
that a white person can say to a black person about race which is not
both incorrect and offensive. Nothing." And there you have it. The crux
of Mamet's play in a nutshell.

Yet, by the end, race, racial stereotyping and prejudice take a back
seat to the question of veracity. Somebody - or everybody - must be
lying, otherwise this predicament couldn't stand. Mamet leaves
questions of racial politics and truth in a tangled mess. He has, Race
suggests, his opinions, but wants to let the audience work through the
knotty dialectics of what race means and how it affects us in early
21st-century America.

Theater J has tackled Mamet, the late-20th- and 21st-century playwright
poet of the downtrodden - those schemers, committers of misdemeanors,
the half-forgotten and the oft-ignored. He ignites their dialogue with
language so fiery it might even make Rahm Emmanuel blush. (Well, maybe
not.) In Glengarry Glen Ross - coincidentally playing at Round House in
Bethesda - Mamet did the same with salesman, but to more stunning
effect. His Speed-the-Plow - seen at Theater J six seasons back - took
on Hollywood deal makers.

No matter where Mamet sets his
characters down, they do best in the verbal boxing matches he
contrives. Unfortunately Mamet consistently gives his female characters
short shrift.

He does the same here in Race with Susan, who at first is a cipher, but
ultimately insinuates herself becoming the instigator for much of the
conflict in the 90-minute work's climax.

It's difficult, though, to like what Mamet does for and with his female
characters. He just can't do them justice - they end up being called
schemers, connivers, liars, would-be prostitutes or worse. To say the
playwright has a misogynistic streak is an understatement.

Is Mamet a racist, too? It's hard to say. That he willingly took the
bait and put race on the table suggests maybe he's not. He did, after
all, grow up in a nice Jewish home on Chicago's South Side. His dad,
unsurprisingly, was a lawyer and maybe those memories triggered this
legal drama. In Mamet's world, no one gets a pass.

Review by Lisa
Traiger

Review by Peter
Marks2/14/2013

Vreeke
applies an appropriately slick veneer,

reinforced
in Misha Kachman’s
shiny office set

The distance between Round House Theatre in Bethesda and Theater J on
16th Street NW is only about seven miles, yet at the moment, that trip
covers a large patch of David Mamet’s polarizing career. Round House
has on its main stage a revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” the 1984 play
that cemented his reputation and won him a Pulitzer Prize, while
Theater J is featuring the regional debut of “Race,” a 2009 drama that
some observers have pointed to as evidence that one of America’s
premier playwrights has descended from scathing portraits to mere
screeds.

You can take in both of these decently
handled productions and judge for yourself. It’s the all-too-rare
instance of programming alignment; I’d have rented a fleet of jitneys
to run between the theaters and called them the Mamet Shuttle. On this
occasion, the shuttling between pieces written 25 years apart does make
plainer a great dramatist’s disappointing narrowing of vision and
growing tendency to hector his listeners rather than enlighten them.

The particular shame in this case is that Theater J’s “Race,” directed
by the always even-keeled John Vreeke, is the shriller but tauter of
the two evenings, featuring a quartet of strong portrayals by Crashonda
Edwards, Leo Erickson, James Whalen and Michael Anthony Williams.
They’re all so commendably committed to the dramatization of this
rather slender play — purporting to give the lowdown on racial politics
as it pertains to the legal profession —that you wish they had a better
distillation of Mamet’s skills to work with.

“Race” is Mamet meets “Law & Order,”
and like most episodes of that
long-running franchise, it is juicy and rife with plot twists — and
almost instantly forgettable. Hinging on a broad-brush belief in a
national tribal mentality, it’s as unsubtle as the issue is complex
(and even the title suggests a reductive treatment of the subject). A
wealthy white man (Erickson) walks into a law firm that has one white
partner (Whalen), one black partner (Williams) and a black associate
(Edwards) and says he’s in need of legal representation: He’s been
accused of raping a black woman.

There’s not a believably human character
in sight. The playwright uses
them as epigrammatic mouthpieces. “There are no facts of the case;
there are only two fictions,” Whalen’s Jack says at one point. “Do you
know what you can say to a black man on the subject of race?”
Williams’s Henry asks at another. “Nothing,” replies Erickson’s Charles.

“Race” goes on like that for 80 argumentative minutes, as Jack and
Henry debate the pros and cons of taking Charles’s case, and Edwards’s
Susan — depicted as the most agenda-driven and thus, in Mamet’s
estimation, the sneakiest — runs in and out of their office. She seems
possessed of a briefcase full of ruses to try to influence the firm’s
decision and Charles’s fate.

Vreeke applies an appropriately slick veneer, reinforced in Misha
Kachman’s shiny office set. On the other hand, Jared Mezzocchi’s
impressive projections, a montage of historical images of civil rights
and other racial struggles, set up expectations for an incisive
elucidation in Theater J’s Goldman Theater — one that never
transpires.

-Review
by Peter Marks

Review
by Andrew LapinFebruary
12, 2012

The stage action at times evokes a
gladiator ring, with the lawyers
swooping in synchronized semicircles around their client-prey before
pouncing on his story’s dangling loose ends.Can you feel that white-hot bubbling of Conservatism in your
gut? Can you smell that unmistakable, pungent aroma of angry men? It’s
David Mamet season in Washington, and the air is thick with chunky
dialogue, whizzing through the Beltway like bullets from an unregulated
firearm.

It
is possible, right now, to attend two different Mamet plays within the
Washington metropolitan area. In addition to the blistering new Theater
J production of 2009’s Race, the Round House Theatre in Bethesda has
simultaneously mounted a stage for the playwright’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning Glengarry Glen Ross. But only one of these works is also
the springboard for a weekend-long symposium on “Race in America” Jan.
16-17, featuring, among other voices, Washington’s non-voting
Congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and former Republican
National Committee chairman Michael Steele.

A conference on race relations is a lofty thing to hang onto the
coattails of any play. It’s true that Mamet always aims for loft, but
the decision to build such a program around a piece by the most
powerful conservative white man in American theatre seems somewhat…
obtuse. Equally so for Theater J to setadmission fees at a level that
many will find prohibitively expensive, charging close to $100 for a
member of the “general public” to experience both the play and the
surrounding talks on race relations that purportedly concern the
general public. The protagonists of Race would no doubt leap to some
cynical conclusions here.

The
play itself concerns a small law firm that takes on a high-profile case
from a wealthy, powerful client, seeking to defend
himself from charges that he sexually assaulted a young woman. The
client is white and his accuser is black, which means — as his very
Mametian lawyers patiently explain in-between curse words — things
aren’t looking so good for him. But the client knows this, and that’s
why he went to a firm with both a white and a black attorney. The
characters have names if you listen closely enough, but then again, why
bother? In the audaciously reductive world of Race, skin is the only
thing that matters.

What follows is a series of hypothetical legal arguments as the
attorneys debate whether to take the case, cementing their own inherent
prejudices in the process. James Whalen, as the white one, is smarmy
and self-assured until he feels the earth shifting under his feet,
while Michael Anthony Williams, as his fiery partner, strikes at points
with furious anger. Drawing parallels to the case, the lone clerk in
their firm is also a young black woman, who, as played by the
steely-eyed Crashonda Edwards, is a spitfire of righteous guilt and
anger, able at various points in the action to play both victim and
perpetrator.
Under John Vreeke’s direction, Theater J’s Race is one tough piece of
jerky. The stage action at times evokes a gladiator ring, with the
lawyers swooping in synchronized semicircles around their client-prey
before pouncing on his story’s dangling loose ends. The color palette
of the firm, heavy on the reds, whites and blues, is a sly joke — as is
the framed photograph, visible only from up close, of the two lawyers
shaking hands with President Obama. (Credit scenic designer Misha
Kachman and lighting designer Andrew Griffin.) And the performances are
uniformly excellent. Erickson, playing a daft man always several steps
behind realizing how the rest of the world sees him, is a standout.

Vreeke also proves about as
adept as one could hope for when
it comes to his biggest hurdle: how to reconcile the two very distinct
sides of David Mamet. As a dramatist, the man has an intoxicating love
of dialogue that makes him consistently one of the most fascinating
writers around. As a political and social theorist, he is a blithering
idiot — his recent,absurdly argued case for a heavily armed society in
Newsweek serving as only the most convenient example.

Race, for better or worse,
spotlights both faces of Mamet — even as its characters argue over the
facts and interpretations of their case, they still find time to sound
off on affirmative action (they don’t like it) and employ stereotypes
as legal arguments (because, see, they’re true sometimes!).

The idea that Mamet, of all people, has enough perspective and passion
on the issue of race to attempt the definitive play on the subject is,
at a basic level, absurd. Under Vreeke’s smartly torqued-up direction,
as the actors leap into cushy chairs, storm in and out of doors and
wave documents around frantically, the title becomes satirical. In
brief video sequences at the outset and the act break, supercuts of
sensitive moments in racial history flash by at such velocity that the
images, like Mamet’s dialogue, become blurs.

Yet even after slyly (inadvertently?) pillorying the ideals Mamet holds
dear, and producing a better play as a result, Theater J isn’t done
with the man yet. In early March, in collaboration with Round House,
the company will host a“Write Like Mamet” contest, a chance for local
playwrights to hash out their own five-minute scenes, in Mamet’s style,
as direct responses to Race. Good luck, local playwrights. Perhaps one
day you, too, can anchor a symposium about both you and something
infinitely more important than you.

-Review by Andrew Lapin,
DC Theatre Scene

Review by Sydney-Chanele Dawkins
February 13, 2013

The
astute direction of John Vreeke keeps the pace and unfolding structure
of Race moving while maintaining a heightened sense of tension
throughout

The Crime: Rape.
Or is it Race?The Defendant:
Charles Strickland is a man who doesn’t comprehend being told “No,” and
one who has never had to beg for anything. A wealthy, older white
Executive with some notoriety, he is accused of raping an
African-American woman in his hotel room. Strickland is ready to fight
this criminal charge.The Prosecution:
Evidence abounds. There is a statement taken from the
chambermaid . . . , witness testimony from a married couple
in the hotel room next door . . . and . . . a red,
sequenced dress.The Defense: David
Mamet’s Race, the theatrical production currently playing at Theater J
in Washington, D.C., is the fury of what happens when an accused man
proclaiming his innocence, asks a boutique law firm of a black and
white attorney to defend him, and how white privilege, racial guilt,
stereotype insensitivity, and the blind ambition of the lawyers
intersect. The lawyers utilize a tag team, attorney/client interaction
to unveil the truth – or rather, to strategize and determine how and if
this case is worthy of their defense. The four characters in this
production find themselves in a quandary when a new lawyer gets overly
involved, and the masked agendas and long felt opinions that smolder
beneath the surface explode.

Is their
client, Charles Strickland (Leo Erickson) lying to himself – as much as
the lawyers’ suspect that he may be lying to them?The
evidence, along with his protestations of innocence, set up a heated
and frenzied debate of trust, shame, guilt, and the embattled
relationship between blacks and whites and America’s connected troubled
past. Leo Erickson’s solid performance on Opening Night was still
developing into the defensive, self-righteous, heel with airs that we
are led his character to be. The edge is there, and he’s a little
suave, but with Erickson, you know he’s digging deeper.The
astute direction of John Vreeke keeps the pace and unfolding structure
of Race moving while maintaining a heightened sense of tension
throughout. Just when you think a situation has resolved its self,
another incendiary confrontation or verbal twist is ignited. Jared
Mezzocchi’s projection design of African American images including
lynchings, blackface, and the beating of Rodney King in between scenes,
add flavor to the rancor and dissent exhibited among the four
characters. The striking modern set design by Mischa Kachman and Andrew
Griffin’s lighting design makes a bold statement without deterring from
the drama on hand.Race
influences our perspectives and understanding of certain events in life.This play
attempts to challenge audiences and confront their understanding of the
racial dynamics and myths concerning race. The audience quickly
discovers Mamet’s world view of justice, and law and order are the
subtext that brings race to the forefront in this taut, blistering
drama and challenging 80 minutes of theater play.Michael
Anthony Williams is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors in the
D.C. area. When you see that Williams is listed in a cast, you can be
certain that it will be a performance (and a production) that you don’t
want to miss. His performance last year in Bay Theatre Company’s Master
Harold . . . and the Boys left a lasting impression, memorable for the
nuanced sensitivity and intense determination Williams captured with
the Sam character. In Race, this impressive actor’s palette of
technique and talent is on full display as the black law partner, Henry
Brown. Williams finesses the Mamet dialogue with skillful
dexterity and emotional fortitude, and his ingenious display of humor
perfectly situated at heightened moments when the audience needs relief
from the verbal swordplay, is what he does best.Both
James Whalen and Jack Lawson, the smug, white law partner he portrays,
are on top of their game from the opening moments when Whelan steps on
the stage. As the most fully developed character, Whalen shines in the
repartee interplay between the other characters – whether it’s a tit
for tat with his client Charles, or an employer relations showdown with
Susan, the attractive, black, new hire that he’s mentoring.

Crashonda Edwards (Susan) has a tough
part. Edward’s body language and controlled tones at different points
throughout the play say one thing, but it’s what her character says or
perhaps more importantly what she doesn’t say that reveals Susan’s true
self. Her character has certainly decided what side of the fence she is
on in this racial legal saga, I would have preferred that this would
have been more evident in her performance. To be fair, the Susan
character is written with unbelievable identity motivations by Mamet.While the
Theater J Race ensemble is an engaging, recommended production, and
speaking as an admirer of much of Mamet’s past theatrical work, films,
and film direction, I don’t love this play. Race is personal, and so is
Mamet’s writing. As such, race – especially how it’s presented in
this play – reveals more than ever before, an evolving Mamet
viewpoint that I don’t much agree with or like.The man
has talent and something to say. A Pulitzer Prize winner for Glengarry
Glen Ross, the way Mamet constructs dialogue and his flair for language
is a highlight with any of his work. He is certainly entitled to write
a play expressing his views on justice and race relations. But Race
feels didactic, and a more honest and authentic discussion of race
among the characters would have made this play resonate more powerfully
for me as a theatrical production; instead it serves more as a
conversation piece for how misguided Mamet’s overreaching conservative
themes are.Mamet’s
oversimplifications on the complex African-Americans’ perspectives of
how race is viewed, is not as black and white as Mamet seems to
believe. All black people most certainly don’t believe that a white
person can never talk about race to a black person and be right. This
is a narrow Mametism that is mentioned twice in the play, and serves as
a philosophical drive (along with white peoples’ mistrust of blacks) as
a foreboding undercurrent. To alienate and provoke for the sake of
being provocative, without a thorough and genuine examination – as with
many of the rapid fire exchanges in Race – is at best Mamet being
trite, condescending, and self-indulgent. At his worst, it’s hypocracy,
plain and simple.There’s a
line in Race, where Jack, the white lawyer, when asked if he thought
that black people were stupid, says “I think all people are stupid;
black people are not exempt.” It’s a good one-liner that drew laughs
from the audience, but it just made me sad to think how many people
might agree with that cynic nonsense. Have you ever noticed that rather
than meaningful introspection, disillusioned or frustrated people tend
to project their deepest fears and disliked personal traits onto other
people? Thus, when they look at other people they often see the
worst of what is in their own personality.Misanthrope?
Pessimist? You decide.Kudos to Artistic Director Ari Roth and
Theater J for coming up with the thoughtful and insightful “Race in
America” Programming during President’s Day Weekend (February 16-17) to
tie in with the production of Race, curating two days of before and
after the performance dialogues addressing the real issues and concerns
involving America’s oldest and most divisive issue.What succeeds with
Theater J’s production of Race is the dedication among the actors to
create believable characters and generate real chemistry – even when
they are spewing lines that don’t sound like the way real people talk.
Vreeke’s steady grip on controlling a vehicle that could quickly become
unweildily in lesser hands is a gift.

What if
we didn’t live in a world of black and white?How will
the racial and legal spin in Race play out?If
one clings to the illusion that racism and prejudice isn’t about you –
(that it’s something associated with other people) – then this Theater
J production of Race reminds you how wrong you are.

No contemporary
playwright can match David Mamet for turning the stuttering,
naturalistic speech patterns of ordinary folks into a revealing sort of
street poetry. Give Harold Pinter his pauses; the stammer belongs to
Mamet. The instant his characters begin backing up and restarting—which
is to say, with their first onstage breaths—you know they’re hiding
something.The legal
eagles in Race are smooth, but in their practiced cadences, you’ll
still detect verbal tics suggesting hesitation and doubt. The problem
this time is that Mamet has been annoyingly programmatic in how he’s
parceled out the arguments. Race tracks a series of attorney-client
meetings in which a legal firm’s partners—one black (Michael Anthony
Williams), the other white (James Whalen)—debate whether they want to
defend a wealthy white man (Leo Erickson) accused of raping a black
woman. Also on hand is a freshly hired black honors student (Crashonda
Edwards) who, being a woman in Mametland, can be counted on to throw
monkey wrenches into their deliberations.The case
in this 2009 play is jaw-droppingly similar to the Dominique
Strauss-Kahn affair of 2011, in which the International Monetary Fund
managing director was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. But
while that lends the evening an initial frisson, what sustains audience
interest is the legal wrangling, as the lawyers instruct on process
(“there are no facts of the case, there are two fictions”) and the
defendant parses their queries with quasisurgical precision (“If I gave
her money does that mean I paid her?”). At Theater J’s final preview
last weekend, the performances hadn’t entirely jelled in John Vreeke’s
briskly authoritative production,but the essence was clear
enough—entrenched white male privilege battling perceived black
entitlement—in any seeming slip of the tongue, more than likely a snare
to trap the unwary.Onstage
relationships neatly mirror the ones an audience can only hear about as
the attorneys quiz their client about a hotel-room liaison where
sequins flew. Still, walking position papers will never be as
emotionally engaging as full-bodied characters. Perhaps as a
consequence, in Race the characters’ (and by proxy, the audience’s)
individual prejudice and hypocrisy seem less on trial than does a
truth-obscuring legal system—hardly the provocation you’d expect from
this particular playwright.